White Insistence on Perpetuating the 43-Consecutive Terms Exclusively White Male Presidency is the Epitome of Monopolistic "Identity Politics"
The 43-consecutive term white male monopoly of the American Presidency is an integral party of white male monopoly "identity politics", in which white males denied Blacks and women participation in the governance of America by denying us the right to vote, by enslaving us, and by rendering women little more than chattel at American law. These historical abominations were part of the practice by white men of "identity politics", in which white men parceled out extra burdens for others while reserving fundamentally important privileges and the most desirable societal participations for themselves.
Now, in a 2006 article entitled, Why Liberals Should Value Identity Politics, Courtney Jung explains that group identity and demands to participate in society by people other than white men arise precisely from a history of having been excluded from participation on the basis of membership in such groups. Meanwhile resistance to inclusion based on group identity expresses a determination to resist sharing the benefits of society with groups that have previously been excluded from such benefits.
A political identity does not arise spontaneously. Instead, by using categories of race, gender, and class to define an unequal distribution of rights and privileges, liberal democratic societies compel some of their members to identify with others of a similar ethnic, sexual, or economic character. In general, only those group definitions that have been used to restrict access to power will become self-conscious and gain salience, in the act of contesting - or protecting - the exclusions that constitute them.
Jung
Thus, movements form around issues of gender, race, or class, not because people feel a need to express a primary commitment to such shared identities, but rather because these categories have regulated the distribution of the goods of a liberal society. The emergence of new political identities therefore signals some shortcoming of the democratic system. We should think of such mobilizations, as Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres suggest, as a miner's canary, warning us of the poisonous gases of entrenched power threatening the health of our democracy. FULL JUNG ARTICLE
The most obvious example of a privilege which white men have historically and presently arrogated unto themselves in America is election to the office of the Presidency. Without a doubt, white maleness is a unearned condition that has historically been used to define who was eligible for the US Presidency, as well as for most other valuable benefits of American society. Among the other benefits that have been arrogated unto white males include freedom from slavery, the right to own and sell property, the right to personally benefit financially from one’s own labor, and the right to be treated with respect and concern by police.
Even as progressives chide equality activists as "racist" and "sexist" for wanting to elect a Black person or woman to the Presidency, they often also offer, as a reason for trying not to do so, that achieving the election of a minority or woman may be difficult, precisely to the degree that these groups continue to be disfavored in the distribution of societal benefits.
So the perpetual insistence that electing a minority or woman President will be difficult highlights the fundamental reason why it is an urgent necessity – because the list of groups who are not permitted to hold the Presidency is also the list of the groups who continue to be denied an equal share of important societal benefits – jobs, loans, housing, education and medical care, civil liberties and civil rights.
Liberals and progressives, who should know better, often demand to know, "What practical difference could it possibly make to end the 43-term exclusive white male monopoly of the United States Presidency"?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
It seems to have been such a long time since we made truly remarkable progress in tearing down the walls of exclusion that we have forgotten the importance of "firsts".
When Jackie Robinson broke the color-line in baseball, becoming the "first" black man whom white America allowed to share the income, fame and dignity that came with professional achievement, that milestone had much more significance than one black man becoming employed and it was much more than the triumph of one man’s ambition. "Jackie Robinson thrilled fans, shattered baseball's color barrier and changed the face of the nation." TIME 100 That "first" milestone was a first manifestation as well as a potent symbol of America’s newfound (if still very limited) willingness to let the best be the best, regardless of skin-color, if only in one small area of our society.
While the color line had to be broken in each sport in individually, from basketball to tennis, the fact that there are now women and Black doctors, lawyers and US Senators derives directly from that initial victory.
Hank Aaron said,
I was 14 years old when I first saw Jackie Robinson. It was the spring of 1948, the year after Jackie changed my life by breaking baseball's color line. His team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, made a stop in my hometown of Mobile, Ala., while barnstorming its way north to start the season, and while he was there, Jackie spoke to a big crowd of black folks over on Davis Avenue. I think he talked about segregation, but I didn't hear a word that came out of his mouth. Jackie Robinson was such a hero to me that I couldn't do anything but gawk at him.
They say certain people are bigger than life, but Jackie Robinson is the only man I've known who truly was. In 1947 life in America — at least my America, and Jackie's — was segregation. It was two worlds that were afraid of each other. There were separate schools for blacks and whites, separate restaurants, separate hotels, separate drinking fountains and separate baseball leagues. Life was unkind to black people who tried to bring those worlds together. It could be hateful. But Jackie Robinson, God bless him, was bigger than all of that.
When white men allowed Jackie Robinson, the best man for the job, to play baseball in 1947, it ushered in a new era in which baseball reached heights and records previously unknown.
But this small victory also was arguably the moment when Blacks and women discovered the New World. If Jackie Robinson had not played Major League baseball in 1947, then US Senator Dianne Feinstein could have become the first woman to represent the States of California in the US Senate. FEINSTEIN BIO
Dianne Feinstein is the first woman elected U.S. Senator from California, (1992), the first woman to be elected president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, (1969), the first woman to be mayor of San Francisco, (1978), the first woman to be considered for selection as the vice-presidential candidate of a major political party, and the first woman to be nominated as governor by a major party in California. JEWISH VIRTUAL LIBRARY
In fact, Jackie Robinson’s 1947 "first" in baseball was also a first step toward implementing that most egalitarian of American principles: "the best man for the job, even when he is not a white male."
But Jackie Robinson’s 1947 entry into baseball does not mean we are finally free, because white male identity politics still has a strong hold on America. Other white male identity-based boundary lines are still being rigidly enforced to limit achievement of Blacks and women. The most prominent example is the arrogationof the US Presidency unto white males alone.
Sixty-one years after Jackie Robinson first swung a Major League home run, America still has not reached the point where the highest office in the land can be held by the best candidate, regardless of her race and skin-color. The Presidency cannot even be held by the best white male candidate, because the lack of competition that is inherent in exclusion of some people from competition means that even the white men who do win the office, are not the best men for the job.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
Although some whites may not have been able to compete after Blacks entered baseball, both whites and Blacks achieved new records and the game itself improved when the artificial limits on real competition were lifted. But the gates don’t open of their own accord. They have to be crashed.
The politics of identity is a struggle to achieve a political voice. Building political identity is an important precondition of democratic political engagement. One's ability to get oneself heard in a democratic system crucially depends on whether one can claim membership in a group with preexisting political weight, or forge a group identity with new political weight. In contemporary politics, race, gender, and ethnicity have developed such a weight.
Identity is not only a possible ground of politics; it is also an effect of politics. People are attached to their race, gender, and ethnicity to the extent that the state has inscribed certain referents - such as skin color, language, beliefs, and practices - as important markers of differential access to resources. Therefore, we can no longer be content to treat categories like race and ethnicity as exogenous to the political process - the spontaneous result of a universal, but not readily analyzable, need for group membership. Instead, we should delve into the role institutions, discourses, and policies play in producing the terms of political contestation.
Of course, white men insist that first achievements of Blacks and women are "only symbolic", and they must convince us of this if they are to maintain their hold on substantive monopoly of power.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
Those who insist that electing a woman or black person cannot make a difference should meditate on the world of golf in the absence of Tiger Woods. http://www.thegolfexpert.com/... The sport of golf has only attained its present heights because it ceded white arrogance and ended the barriers that would otherwise have excluded its best players. As Tiger Woods brings the game of golf to new heights above those which white male players had been able to achieve, new interest in the sport, more lucrative endorsements and higher purses have resulted in higher earnings for whites and blacks alike.
• At one point this summer, CBS telecasts of golf tournaments in which Tiger played were averaging a 6.9 rating. At the same point in the summer, CBS telecasts of golf tournaments in which Tiger didn't play were averaging a rating of 2.9. (A ratings point equals slightly more than one million homes with televisions watching a program.)
• With Tiger in contention (he won by a stroke) during the final round of the Bell Canadian Open in September, CTV in Canada drew an audience of 1.5 million viewers. Last year, the audience for its final-round coverage was less than one-quarter of that total.
For golf to reach these heights, white men had to stop merely mouthing platitudes about "the best man for the job" and actually begin implementing the egalitarian principles upon which this nation’s propaganda was founded.
Although white men clearly have excluded blacks and women from participation in society out of fear of losing the benefits that come with winning, white golfers now acknowledge that increased competition and historic new achievements have been rewarded with higher wages for all of the players, not just the Black man who has proved that he plays golf better than all of the white men.
For those who don't play the game of golf, the name Tiger Woods is still recognizable. He has become the unofficial ambassador to the game. By many, he is viewed as a golf phenomenon and is expected to win every time he steps out onto the course. For people of color and minorities, he has become the Jackie Robinson of golf, a catalyst, opening doors that were once closed-or so you thought.
Viewed primarily as a "gentleman's game", for years golf has been an exclusive privilege only enjoyed by white men, whose financial status enabled them to join exclusive country clubs, void of women and people of color. Since golf's inception, there have been many changes in the sport. Golf has turned into a $600 million a year industry. These changes include increased winnings, technologically advanced golf equipment, national television exposure, even an exclusive golf television cable channel; and would you believe it, there are even universities that offer Master's degree's in golf management. TOWSON.EDU
By limiting any area of endeavor to white men -- be it golf, basketball, singing or acting -- we also limits the accomplishment of the whites who are permitted to participate. Open competition challenges contenders to "dig deep" for the best performances, while artificial limits on competition invite laziness and mediocrity. None of us can become great unless all of us are allowed to participate. If America seems not to have accomplished all that it could, we need only look to our historical and present insistence that only white men be permitted to show us what they can do.
While America has tolerated the catastrophic failures of white male presidents, there are and always have been "Tiger Woods" candidates among the minorities and women who have been excluded simply because they are not white men. Now they demand to show how much more the Presidency can achieve if the competition for the office is truly opened to all. US Sentators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama
Public opinion polls indicate that the public prefers the woman and black candidate over the white male candidates, which may well signal a continued public demand for fundamental change. But rather than riding this wave of change and using it to crash the gates of historical inequality, there are liberals and progressives who insist that we still most continue the white male monopoly into the 44th Presidency, regardless of what polls show now. DRAFTGORE?
And now here come the lying spymasters of white male hegemony, trying to convince us that "down is up and up is down." They insist that polls that show a woman ahead of all of her competitors are based on name recognition only, even though her competitors include a former vice president of the United States who spent four months in the national and international news as his unsuccessful presidential bid hung in the balance and then died in the US Supreme Court.
An Inconvenient Truth is also the title of a companion book by Gore, which reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller lists of July 2[1] and August 13, 2006, and again during several months on the list.[2]
The film premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opened in New York and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006 (see 2006 in film). It is the third-highest-grossing documentary in the United States to date.
INCONVENIENT TRUTH
There is another possible reason why America tells pollsters it doesn’t want this universally known man for President: America has compared this ubiquitous white man to the woman and black man and decided in favor of change instead of the old-boy network. When people suggest that the woman is at the top of the polls because her challengers are unknown to the public, these desperate attempts to prolong the white male monopoly on the presidency become profoundly insulting as to leave the public dumbfounded and breathless, while gasping for air. DRAFT GORE?
Electing the "first" minority or woman in any position is a fundamental milestone, because it is both a concrete manifestation and a potent symbol of a newly egalitarian distribution of access to societal benefits. One of these new privileges is the freedom to achieve beyond the ceiling that white men have reached but not exceeded. A level playing field is a fundamental precondition for the achievement of excellence and the banishment of mediocrity.
Those who have arrogated societal benefits unto themselves often use sophistic reasoning to discourage others from trying to achieve "firsts". They insist that firsts are "merely" symbolic, but a first black president is no more "merely" symbolic than a baby’s first breath is merely symbolic. It is both symbolic and essential, and those who insist otherwise are deceitful. A first black or woman in any position is not merely symbolic. Instead, it is an important precondition for equal access to societal participation itself.
It is actually possible to elect someone other than a white male while also electing the best candidate for the job. This is so simply because white men are not inherently better than everybody else.
But the objection is always raised by whites that, "I will not vote for a black or woman simply because of their minority status." This insultingly assumes that, other than the fact of being a minority or a woman, there could be no other valid reason or quality that would recommend a Black or woman for the Oval Office. And with one cliché, the majority of the population, their achievements and qualities, are cast away.
Consider the following case:
A psychiatrist advises a very ill patient to improve his health by eating more fruit with vitamin C. The patient responds, indignantly, "I will not eat rotten fruit just because it has vitamin C!" The doctor quickly understands the patient’s confusion and assures the patient that not all fruit is rotten. "There is plenty fruit available that is actually quite fresh and good." But it is no use. The patient leaves the doctor’s office repeating his initial response as if it were a mantra: "I will not eat rotten fruit just to get vitamin C." And so the patient eats no fruit at all and soon he dies of scurvy.
In America, even after 200 years we simply do not know all that America can achieve because we still have not removed the stumbling blocks of prejudice, the shackles of arrogant conceit, and the chains of white male fear and selfishness from our paths. Particularly with respect to the American Presidency, America has not changed a wit since the days when black men could only be slaves, caddies and shoe-shine boys.
So, while a black or female Tiger Woods demands to be allowed to show what she can do, we have a white Bush league male president, who is demonstrably less able, who struts about the golf course embarrassing the game, proud and conceited that his white male privilege, money and a birth have exalted him even above all blacks and women categorically, even though he clearly does not deserve the privilege.
Out of all Americans, one would think that those liberals and progressives who most decry this perverse Bush league result would demand to change the system in fundamental ways, opening competition to the best and the brightest. Instead, they demand that we elect yet another white man to replace the one who has done so much damage, perpetuating the unique historical privilege of white males to preside over the destruction of the world that all of us must inhabit together.
A "first" black or female President manifests and indicates this society’s increased willingness to finally distribute its privileges and rights equally. Just as a baby’s first breath is a principal manifestation and an important milestone in the life of a human infant, indicating that life has commenced, electing the first minority or female President will be an indication that life has commenced for these groups in America, ending a much prolonged period of political incubation.
But, each successive Presidential election that passes without this birth is not a neutral event. It represents the abortion of justice, a still-birth in the life of equality and freedom. A baby’s first breath does not guarantee life, but its absence precludes life. That first breath does not guarantee a long and fruitful life, but its absence is a sure sign of death. For those whose death is compelled by the white male monopoly of the Presidency, the insistence that we breathe the breath of freedom is a demand for life itself.
And so it is immensely painful to live in a country that compels you to die again and again while insisting that your death is irrelevant and your birth is gratuitous.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
Those who propose that the only way to achieve their political goals to perpetuate the white male monopoly of the presidency are tacitly, implicitly asserting that their political goals –whatever they are - are more important than the equal participation of the majority of Americans – those who are not white and male. Those who propose that necessity obligates us to perpetuate the white male monopoly also insult the intelligence and capabilities of others, implicitly or explicitly asserting that the white male monopoly that is presently symbolized by George Bush, is an example of America at its best and brightest.
It is fitting that the 43-consecutive term exclusive white male monopoly of the America presidency end with the Presidency of George W. Bush. This Presidency has convinced America that exclusive domination of the presidency by white males is not the solution to America’s governance but rather the fundamental cause of our national failure. America is ready for change and insists on electing its best and brightest candidates although or precisely because they are not the white males who offer themselves for the job.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. Martin Luther King, Jr.http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/martin_luther_king_jr.html
The truth is that those who have been excluded from participation could hardly make America worse in one term than it has become over the last four years.
The white male monopoly simply does not work as advertised and urgently, urgently demands to be exchanged for a more functional equality. The era of the hegemony of white male identity politics is dead and equality of opportunity takes its place.
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